Weekly Update from the Senior Pastor
April 12, 2006 
Dear Family and Friends,
Each year, Easter has a shadow side as predictable as visitors at Easter Sunday church services. Over the years I’ve learned to expect it, smile at it and keep perspective on it.
Each Easter the popular media: magazines and news shows feature lead stories on a “startling new, bold and provocative” book or archeological find or theory about the ‘real’ identity and mission of Jesus—always suspiciously close to whatever avant-garde social issue is hot. A new scholar publishes his new interpretation on what really happened in Galilee and Judea two thousand years ago and the press goes into a short-lived feeding frenzy on how this new scenario may alter the very foundations of Christianity.
Then Easter comes. And millions come home spiritually to hear the story again from the four Gospels, to sing and to share that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead—He is risen indeed! After that, most of the visitors drift back into lives of practical agnosticism. Likewise, that startling new book by the provocative professor rapidly fades into the oblivion of hundreds of such books. The media turns back to the killing fields of the world for the next big story. Most significant, the church continues to be the church, ministering love and mercy in the name of the risen Christ and offering His salvation.
This year the crop of nay-sayers is especially numerous and vociferous, offering magazines multiple options for use in mucking up the mental air-waves of Easter week. 2006 has a stunning selection really:
The Gospel of Judas gets top billing It is an authentic piece of Egyptian archeology from the 3rd or 4th century that offers a Gnostic version of the story of Judas a couple of centuries after the fact, transforming history’s most famous betrayer into a loyal soldier of a Gnostic Jesus. [The Gnostics were a heretical sect that taught an evil and lesser god created the material world, while a more Hinduistic spiritual God saved humanity by teaching them to see the non-importance of the material body in favor of their inner spirit-being]. Of course, our Gnostic-Judas’ real point is that Jesus saves man by the secret wisdom of the Gnostic sect—not by dying for our sins on the Cross. Buying this is akin to interpreting Christianity in the 20th century by a Jehovah’s Witness Watchtower magazine.
Scholar James Tabor has his “bold new take” laid out in The Jesus Dynasty—the Hidden History of Jesus and His Royal Family (does this sound vaguely familiar, DaVinci fans? This is scholarship following blockbuster fiction—seizing the moment while it is hot.)
Or you can ponder the “provocative suggestion” of an esteemed scientist who theorizes that Jesus did indeed walk on water—because, due to freak weather conditions, the Sea of Galilee froze solid, a theoretical possibility that no records support. And so, on it goes, front-page-lead article ad-nauseum.
Meanwhile we’re walking through Holy Week. On this day Jesus spent the day preparing His disciples for His departure, pondering the Last Supper (Thursday) and the Cross (Friday). He only had hours left. We do too.
On Friday Jesus was spiked to the Roman cross and spoke seven statements, then died amidst an earthquake and a veil tearing in the temple of Jerusalem. Silence. Heartbreak. But Sunday is coming. And it is for us also!
So this week read a bit of media-hype, but read much more from the Gospels. Then gather Friday evening for our Good Friday Memorial service from 7:00-8:00 p.m. And finally, come Sunday morning. I don’t promise any “startling new” take on anything, but I promise to proclaim God’s good news: that the bleeding, broken Jesus of Friday’s Cross is the resurrected Lord of history and the undefeatable hope in your life. We will share that moment as a community of faith when we affirm together: Christ the Lord is risen—He is risen indeed! See you then.
Love,
Richard
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